I wrote this for a nostalgia thread on my first realms forum. It'll feel incomplete to you guys because I'll only put the part that doesn't have anything to do with the realm, but yeah.

Ah, I still enjoy the delicate process of creating a fresh character. Spawning in the starting zone, with the default interface, and with sound enabled and music playing... The music! The music alone takes me away! You should try this someday - enable music and fly into your first starting area. My mind starts remembering those first moments by itself, it feels like time travel; it's not just flashbacks, I literally feel the same emotions that I have 7 years back. Flashbacks are merely a result of this... re-living, I guess I can call it that.

No, I insist. Try this:

Do you understand what I'm talking about?

Or maybe this is more like it?

The fascination. Being fascinated about the scale of everything: the roads, the fences, the bushes, the trees, the buildings - you could enter and explore almost every house! Nothing felt small, nothing felt like a toy. I remember looking up all the time because the trees looked amazing to me. It was almost weird at first - no online game before had these proportions. Damn, I can't even think of a single player game released before 2004 where the open world felt so real. It wasn't just oversized, naked, copy pasted and half empty, it was the opposite of all of that. And you felt like a part of it. You weren't oversized compared to the environment, you weren't bigger than the NPCs. You felt like you're playing a character that is an integral part of the game world, a huge, exciting world, and the scale made it believable.

Being surprised by new content. Every. Single. Time. Every time you dinged a couple of levels and moved on to the next zone, you would be blown away by the new textures, new environment, new objects, new sky, new enemies, new music. The moment you got bored of the old zone and sighed with relief that it's finally over and you're being sent somewhere else, you would discover a zone that looked completely new, and you couldn't help but feel excited about it like you would be about a new game. Do you remember entering the race capitals? Not the new expansion ones, the original four. I would lose hours in those cities just to look at the architecture. All of them felt so alive.

I wrote this for a nostalgia thread on my first realms forum. It'll feel incomplete to you guys because I'll only put the part that doesn't have anything to do with the realm, but yeah.

Ah, I still enjoy the delicate process of creating a fresh character. Spawning in the starting zone, with the default interface, and with sound enabled and music playing... The music! The music alone takes me away! You should try this someday - enable music and fly into your first starting area. My mind starts remembering those first moments by itself, it feels like time travel; it's not just flashbacks, I literally feel the same emotions that I have 7 years back. Flashbacks are merely a result of this... re-living, I guess I can call it that.

No, I insist. Try this:

Do you understand what I'm talking about?

Or maybe this is more like it?

The fascination. Being fascinated about the scale of everything: the roads, the fences, the bushes, the trees, the buildings - you could enter and explore almost every house! Nothing felt small, nothing felt like a toy. I remember looking up all the time because the trees looked amazing to me. It was almost weird at first - no online game before had these proportions. Damn, I can't even think of a single player game released before 2004 where the open world felt so real. It wasn't just oversized, naked, copy pasted and half empty, it was the opposite of all of that. And you felt like a part of it. You weren't oversized compared to the environment, you weren't bigger than the NPCs. You felt like you're playing a character that is an integral part of the game world, a huge, exciting world, and the scale made it believable.

Being surprised by new content. Every. Single. Time. Every time you dinged a couple of levels and moved on to the next zone, you would be blown away by the new textures, new environment, new objects, new sky, new enemies, new music. The moment you got bored of the old zone and sighed with relief that it's finally over and you're being sent somewhere else, you would discover a zone that looked completely new, and you couldn't help but feel excited about it like you would be about a new game. Do you remember entering the race capitals? Not the new expansion ones, the original four. I would lose hours in those cities just to look at the architecture. All of them felt so alive.

I'm kinda jealous man. I got all this nostalgia for Everquest, which was much more punishing/real/alive than vanilla WoW, but not nearly as polished, and the graphics were obviously much worse. But man I played it again recently, and the nostalgia is crazy. I kinda wish I had that with WoW.

Playing this game for the first time on your own, back in Vanilla when people cared less about end game and more about the experience as a whole, was a great time. I almost feel sorry for all the people who joined in later and got pushed through the content or used something lame like Recruit a Friend - that should've been something they introduced for alts, not new players. Levels were much slower (I'm talking like, 4-5 times slower) and you went through several "level plateaus" that each had a little meta game of their own, with the instance farming for specific items, PvP hot spots, and even active battlegrounds. Honestly, end game was less active than 49s for the first few months of a new server.

Not to mention how many new contacts you got just by leveling. No queueing, no cross realm, only the chat and interaction with other people on your server. No transfers, no name changes, nobody going in, nobody going out. The reputation you had was yours and you couldn't change it for 15 bucks. Elite/group quests that weren't soloable. Asking to group up with people waiting for a quest NPC to spawn, because they only spawn once every 20 minutes. People not being douchebags because they know their reputation has a weight and because they are more interested in exploring the game than being cunts, besides, they could be exploring an instance with you in a few levels.

You couldn't leave a guild and insult everybody in it, because the other guilds on the server would know about it the same day.

Do you remember walking first time into Stormwind?

god damn

Seeing how its all like a real city, tons of players running around busy doing stuff or just exploring like yourself. Tons of NPCs everywhere, and it's all in motion. Those towers looking like real, gigantic towers. A keep that looks like an actual keep. Libraries, shops, taverns, park, mage tower, canals...

I wrote this for a nostalgia thread on my first realms forum. It'll feel incomplete to you guys because I'll only put the part that doesn't have anything to do with the realm, but yeah.

Ah, I still enjoy the delicate process of creating a fresh character. Spawning in the starting zone, with the default interface, and with sound enabled and music playing... The music! The music alone takes me away! You should try this someday - enable music and fly into your first starting area. My mind starts remembering those first moments by itself, it feels like time travel; it's not just flashbacks, I literally feel the same emotions that I have 7 years back. Flashbacks are merely a result of this... re-living, I guess I can call it that.

No, I insist. Try this:

Do you understand what I'm talking about?

Or maybe this is more like it?

The fascination. Being fascinated about the scale of everything: the roads, the fences, the bushes, the trees, the buildings - you could enter and explore almost every house! Nothing felt small, nothing felt like a toy. I remember looking up all the time because the trees looked amazing to me. It was almost weird at first - no online game before had these proportions. Damn, I can't even think of a single player game released before 2004 where the open world felt so real. It wasn't just oversized, naked, copy pasted and half empty, it was the opposite of all of that. And you felt like a part of it. You weren't oversized compared to the environment, you weren't bigger than the NPCs. You felt like you're playing a character that is an integral part of the game world, a huge, exciting world, and the scale made it believable.

Being surprised by new content. Every. Single. Time. Every time you dinged a couple of levels and moved on to the next zone, you would be blown away by the new textures, new environment, new objects, new sky, new enemies, new music. The moment you got bored of the old zone and sighed with relief that it's finally over and you're being sent somewhere else, you would discover a zone that looked completely new, and you couldn't help but feel excited about it like you would be about a new game. Do you remember entering the race capitals? Not the new expansion ones, the original four. I would lose hours in those cities just to look at the architecture. All of them felt so alive.

I'm kinda jealous man. I got all this nostalgia for Everquest, which was much more punishing/real/alive than vanilla WoW, but not nearly as polished, and the graphics were obviously much worse. But man I played it again recently, and the nostalgia is crazy. I kinda wish I had that with WoW.

I played EQ as well from 02 until WoW beta came out...my god man, I miss that game so much. The nostalgia you get from MMO's is a great feeling, but that's the problem with playing them, they change so much over time that they never will be what they once were.

-when you ran into Blackrock Mountain, got fps drop, and swam in the lava five seconds later.
-group-farming honor at Western Plaguelands, because WSG queue was 1 hour.
-wallwalking from Ashenvale WSG entrance onto roof of Barrens WSG entrance, and then rape their whole base and get shitloads of dishonorable kills, and then regret it hard.
-when you had to wait a half day to run through UBRS, because only ONE guy on the server had it, and he was shithead ninja called Doom.
-popping healthpots in duels.
-when having enemy castbars was pro hax and unknown
-when you could lie to a GM and get a free namechange.
- PatPvP.avi

The community is what made the game so fun. You had a reputation and you had to defend it every time you logged on. Even duels mattered.

Ktpearie, on 05 February 2013 - 01:33 PM, said:

I remember when serennia stole my ipod and pooped in a shirt.

Lmfao. Gameriot blogs.. good times. What is Serennia doing a day like this?

I'm kinda jealous man. I got all this nostalgia for Everquest, which was much more punishing/real/alive than vanilla WoW, but not nearly as polished, and the graphics were obviously much worse. But man I played it again recently, and the nostalgia is crazy. I kinda wish I had that with WoW.

I had this feeling for Ultima Online, without UO most mmos would not even exist. I played from 1998 to 2003 (some on dial up). I still believe to this day that, it had the most balanced pvp system. I played it again again a few months ago,it was crazy.